GalaxyZoo finds most galaxies in universe are left-handed

by William Atkins

Monday, 12 November 2007

Based on conclusions from over one-hundred-thousand GalaxyZoo volunteers as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey project, most galaxies seem to be rotating counterclockwise in relation to the Earth. Astronomers wonder why?

Preliminary results from the volunteers indicate that the universe possesses the property called “handedness.” That is, most galaxies seem to be left-handed, or prefer to rotate counterclockwise when looked at from our position on the planet Earth.

However, astronomers are surprised by this finding. They would have thought, based on current theories on the origins and evolution of the universe, that galaxies throughout the universe possessed randomness with respect to rotation. If such theories hold true, then handedness would also be random; that is, about half of them would be right-handed (rotating clockwise) and the other half of them would be left-handed (rotating counterclockwise).

In addition, the property of handedness would be pretty much evenly distributed throughout the universe: counterclockwise rotating galaxies interspersed with clockwise rotating galaxies in a random mix. Instead, most galaxies were found to be left-handed.

This finding, thus, needs to be explained.

Astronomers will be studying this result in further detail in the future with the hope of finding out why this lefthandedness occurs in the universe.

A group of astronomers recently developed GalaxyZoo as a different but very effective way to identify one million galaxies that were in need of being classified. They asked thousands of volunteers to help organize about one million photographs of galaxies taken by a digital camera mounted on a telescope located at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico (United States).

The volunteers were asked to identify galaxies as either elliptical or spiral, and to state in which direction each galaxy rotated.

The project is called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, but the volunteer project is called GalaxyZoo.

The project was written about in the July 13, 2007 iTWire article “GalaxyZoo: Galactic number of volunteers needed to identify 1 million galaxies.”

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